“Actually, I made that part up.”
Vasso looked at her blankly.
“The part about Henry asking for a new trial. But thanks for confirming that he was considering it. And that you would do quote-anything-unquote to protect your reputation.”
Vasso brushed the lapels of his suit, as if he had been in a fistfight, and yanked the sleeves down over his wrists. Hand-tailored suits didn’t do as much for a man if he kept gaining weight after the fitting.
“Can I give you some advice?” he asked Tess. “Take a branch off the family tree. Your father understands how things work, when to push, and when to walk away. Your father knows all about favors. Someone wants me to step in, do a little pro bono for some bozo, I’m fine with that. I didn’t do it for Henry, you get me, or his bitch of a sister. The real owner of Domenick’s doesn’t want his name on the license. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t live in the city. Maybe it’s because he has a criminal record. These are just hypotheticals, I hope you understand. But bar owners all over the city find ways of getting around the regs. I helped one out. That doesn’t make me the fucking missing link.”
“Henry Dembrow died for a reason. Maybe Gwen Schiller did, too.”
“Everyone dies for a reason. Everyone dies for the
“Then you’ll never die, because you’ve got no heart to stop.”
Vasso smiled. Everything was a game to him, Tess saw, and the score was kept in dollars and cents. He didn’t believe in anything-Democrat or Republican, pro-life or pro-choice, right or wrong. Pay him, he was yours. If the American Cancer Society threw more money at him than the cigarette industry, he’d carry their water, fight for their bills. He could lobby for any side of any issue, as long as he was paid to do it. What some people called a devil’s advocate.
“It slows you down,” he said, “caring too much. You’ve got a case tied up neat as a Christmas package. Henry Dembrow confessed to killing that girl. You found out who she was, and now everyone thinks you’re a fucking genius. A fucking genius with a nice rack. You should be out getting corporate accounts, not wasting time on looking for explanations that don’t exist. But I’ll tell you this much: I don’t know anything. I make it a point not to know anything I don’t need to know. Which is what makes me so smart.”
He walked back into the Senate gallery. Tess caught a burst of oratory as the door swung open. Words, words, words, words, words. Everyone was so full of words down here.
Like someone’s present, Tess realized.
Tied to someone’s past.
chapter 19
YOUR FATHER KNOWS ALL ABOUT FAVORS .
Tess started to call Pat from her cell phone, then thought better of it. Vasso was full of shit, throwing out her father’s name with the same instinct that caused some street kid to insult your mother. Vasso was an old chauvinist who thought Tess’s daddy could boss her around. There were favors, and there were favors. The liquor board had a less-than-illustrious history, but her father had never taken a dime from anyone, never bent the rules for anyone. Well, maybe for Spike, here or there. But that was different. That was family.
She felt as if her car were heading up 97 on its own. The Toyota seemed full of purpose, as if it always knew where it was going, while she felt lost and confused. Vasso’s words were like a slow-working poison moving toward her brain.
The Toyota headed up Martin Luther King, but hung a left instead of a right, heading into the Hollins Market area. Winter light wasn’t kind to the neighborhood. She had to park several blocks away from Domenick’s, but she found a space on a small alley street. When she walked in, it was as if no one had moved in the days since she had first visited. Same bartender, same two young blond guys playing pinball, same old men in the booths, same lone woman in the corner.
“I need the owner,” she told the bartender.
“Not here,” he said.
“Gwen Schiller worked here,” she announced to the room at large. No response. “Gwen Schiller, the girl who was killed by Henry Dembrow in Locust Point last year. Before she died, she told someone she worked here.”
The only sound in the room was a pinball, rolling down the length of the table and past flippers, flippers that were not engaged. She had everyone’s attention.
The woman in the corner lowered her newspaper and spoke. “People say lots of things. That don’t make them true.”
“You the owner?”
“I run the place.”
“What’s your name?”
“My name is for my friends. You going to be my friend?” Tess didn’t say anything. “I’m Nicola DeSanti. My husband was Domenick DeSanti.”
“So you’re the real owner?”
“I run the place,” Nicola DeSanti repeated, and Tess wondered how she was defining “place.” The bar, the neighborhood, the precinct, the ward, Southwest Baltimore?
“How do you know Arnie Vasso?”
“We move,” Nicola yawned, “in the same circles.” Tess couldn’t imagine her moving at all. Her dark hair had almost no gray in it, her flat brown eyes were shrewd.
“What about Henry Dembrow?”
“Never knew no Henry,” she said, and went back to her paper. The two blonds sauntered out of the bar, as if responding to some signal Tess had missed. They made a point of getting too close, of brushing by her, and she caught their scent, body odor with an overlay of something pharmaceutical. The pinball machine gave off one last ring. Game over. Show over.
“Gwen worked here, though.”
“Never knew no Gwen.”
“She might have used a different name.”
“Might of.” Nicola DeSanti’s voice was mild, even agreeable. So why did she frighten her so much?
“Would you at least look at a photograph of her, just to put my mind at ease?”
“No,” Nicola DeSanti said.
The waitress who had brought Tess her green pepper rings on her first visit came out of the kitchen then. She was wearing an ivory dress, semi-formal, and not quite right for any occasion. The dress looked as if it couldn’t decide whether it was intended for a cocktail party or a first communion. Some female instinct told Tess that a man had picked out the dress, a man who didn’t know too much about clothes.
“What do you think?” Her question seemed to be for the room in general.
“I think,” Nicola DeSanti said, “that you should go back in the kitchen and wait for your ride.”
It was only then that the waitress registered Tess’s presence. She nodded, flustered, and backed out of the room. She seemed nervous in the dress, as if worried about keeping it clean. A legitimate concern in dusty Domenick’s, but wouldn’t the kitchen have more hazards?
“Gwen worked here,” Tess said. Not a question this time.
“I don’t think so,” Nicola said.
“How can you know, if you won’t even look at her photograph? How can you be so sure, unless you do know Gwen already?”
“Her picture was in the paper.”
This wasn’t a cross-examination, there was no jury to which Tess could appeal, or point out the inconsistency
